NO TO DRUG CHECKPOINTS

The Supreme Court last week drew an important line protecting privacy
interests from the war on drugs by swatting down drug checkpoints run by
the city of Indianapolis. Under the program, the police stopped cars
briefly and let drug-sniffing dogs nose around the outside. When the dogs
smelled drugs, the cars were searched. The roadblocks netted a sizable haul
of criminals. As a constitutional matter, however, the court is right to
look askance at any program in which individuals are randomly subjected to
criminal investigation when police have no advance suspicion of wrongdoing
on their part.

The issue is tricky because the court has, in the past, rightly upheld
other roadblocks. Drunk-driving checkpoints are constitutional, and the
court also has okayed stopping cars to prevent the smuggling of illegal
aliens. What makes the drug checkpoints different is the intent behind
them: Catching criminals. Drunk-driving checkpoints are designed to protect
the roadways from intoxicated drivers; alien-smuggling checkpoints are
intended, first and foremost, to protect our borders. Such checkpoints may
happen to result in arrests, but they're not intended chiefly to gather
evidence for prosecution.

The drug roadblocks, however, are mainly designed to facilitate criminal
investigation. And as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor put it for the 6 to 3
majority, "We cannot sanction stops justified only by the generalized and
ever-present possibility that interrogation and inspection may reveal that
any given motorist has committed some crime." The dissenters respond that
because the stops are minimally intrusive, their law enforcement purpose
shouldn't matter. But if that's right, it's hard to see why police could
not have pedestrians sniffed for drugs as they walk down the streets. The
court is right to insist, as Justice O'Connor put it, that when the purpose
is catching bad guys, "stops can only be justified by some quantum of
individualized suspicion."